Sharp-tongued Dummies Get Religious Point Across

Ventriloquism Helps Get Point Across

September 07, 1991|By GERALD RENNER; Courant Religion Writer

C Almost any dummy can teach religion. In fact, more than a thousand of them are doing just that in churches and synagogues nationwide. Mark B. Levy employs three of them at Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford -- a 4-foot puppet boy he calls Nosher, a wisecracking myna bird named Dr. Heckel and a happy monkey known as Simcho.

Levy, the synagogue's education director, is a ventriloquist. He is one of about a thousand Jewish and Christian religion teachers who, he said, make up about half the membership in the National Association of Ventriloquists.

"They find it a very effective teaching technique," Levy said. "The fact that I am talking to the puppet gives it a feeling of reality. And a child will talk much quicker to a puppet than to a teacher." Levy used his puppets this week to open the Conservative synagogue's new religious school year and engage the children in discussion about the Jewish high holy days that begin Sunday at sunset.

The 10-day period begins with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year -- a day of reflection and repentance. It ends with Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, on Sept. 18. The high holy days are the most solemn part of the year in the Jewish faith.

Also known as the Days of Awe, the high holy days are ushered in with the sounding of the shofar, a ram's horn, used since ancient times to call people to repentance.

Levy blew the shofar and explained it to Nosher, bringing delight to a class of children in the synagogue's chapel on Wednesday: Nosher: What was that noise that hurt my ears? Levy: That was the shofar.

Nosher: Well, I don't think you'll get so far with that one! What's it for? Levy: Well, Rosh Hashanah, the new Jewish year, is beginning next week. The shofar reminds us that we should listen and watch what we do.

Nosher: I used to have a watchdog.

Levy: What happened to the dog? Noser: He ate my watch! About 150 children, from 2-year-old preschoolers to high school youngsters, are enrolled in the synagogue's Louis Mitnick Religious

School. Fourteen teachers conduct classes after school several days a week and on Sundays.

Levy goes into his routine at the beginning of school and on special occasions during the year, particularly to tell the stories behind holy days and festivals of the Jewish people.

As an icebreaker, he finds, ventriloquism is unparalleled. "The figure can say what kids might feel but be afraid to say it," he said.

Levy: Well, here we are, ready to start a new year in this religious school.

Nosher: School! Oh, my gosh, this is school! I think I am getting sick. (Nosher buries his head in Levy's chest.)

Levy: Look at me.

Nosher: That makes me even sicker! The exchange got a hearty laugh from the class. Some of the children felt bold enough later to banter with Nosher when he visited them in their classrooms.

"What's your favorite holiday?" asked 10-year-old Sara Kaplowitz.

"Passover -- I can pass right over it," Nosher said with a devilish laugh, his head popping up high on his extended neck.

"What's yours?" Nosher asked.

"Hanukkah -- that's when we get presents," she said, getting excited agreement from her classmates.

An educator for 30 years, Levy taught himself ventriloquism when he was 8 and, by the time he was 10, he said, he was performing in school and on street corners in the Bronx, N. Y.

The 51-year-old ventriloquist was influenced by some of the great performers of the 1940s and 50s -- Edgar Bergen and his lifelike Charlie McCarthy, Paul Winchell and his redheaded puppet Jerry Mahoney, and a virtuoso named Jimmy Nelson.

Learning to talk without moving the lips is the most elementary part of the craft, Levy said, "like a musician knowing the musical scales." Ventriloquism entails much more, he said -- puppetry, stand-up comedy and magic.

"I am creating an illusion, I am creating a character. The idea is not so much to talk without moving your lips but to create a believable character," he said.

The audience cooperates in the illusion when it accepts that the puppet has a personality different from the ventriloquist's.

One of the greatest ventriloquist acts he ever saw, Levy said, was Paul Winchell doing pantomine with one of his figures.

"Can you imagine a ventriloquist act without talking?" he asked.

In July, Levy went for the first time to a national convention of the ventriloquists' association. It was held in Fort Littleton, Ky., the site of a national ventriloquism museum, where Charley McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd, Jerry Mahoney and other puppet greats have been retired.

Levy said about 450 ventriloquists were at the convention, many of them priests, nuns, ministers and laypeople who use their talents in religious education.

"I was stunned," he said, not having known until then just how widespread the use of ventriloquism in religious education had become.

Levy has teamed up with a Methodist minister from Texas, who was at the convention, to write a script about religious tolerance that could be used by ventriloquists in public schools and other gatherings.

The minister, the Rev. George Wilson of Port Arthur, Texas, said in a telephone interview that the script would be particularly useful in that state because "many people here never come into contact with Jews." Levy is also going to do his doctoral dissertation at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York on the use of ventriloquism in religious education.

"I was very doubtful at first and said you are going to have to convince me this is worth doing," said Levy's adviser, Professor Joseph Lukinsky.

Lukinsky said Levy outlined a convincing case that ventriloquism in education could be a serious research project, entailing educational and child psychology, teaching techniques and measurable learning, among other things.

"This is going to be so much fun I really look forward to it," Lukinsky said. "Doctorates are usually so serious and dull."